As any Fast Food Fever fan knows,
one of the first destinations when one arrives in an
exotic locale is, of course, McDonalds. There's a special
something at the Golden Arches; they have a way of distilling
local culture into one sandwich - the McLobster in New
England, for example.

The furthest-flung Fast Food Fever
correspondents to date weren't disappointed in New Zealand.
We found the most unique fast food sandwich ever created
outside the kitchens of Fast Food Fever: the Kiwiburger.
It was almost as if FFF had consulted on the recipe for
this one.

Back off, environmentalists: the
Kiwiburgerdoes not contain the ground meat of
the severely endangered New Zealand national bird. "Kiwi" is
an all -purpose prefix to describe all things NZ - what
we have here is simply the national burger. The recipe
is inspired by the Kiwi salad, a delicacy you can find
in any restaurant. A Kiwi salad traditionally contains
lettuce, ham, boiled egg, and cooked red beets (we found
Kiwi cuisine in general to be unfortunately quasi-British).
For the purposes of the burger, the ham is replaced by
a full-fledged McDonalds all-beef patty, and the egg
is fried in that perfect round shape that we Americans
know from any of the McDs breakfast sandwiches. Believe
it or not, the beet makes it intact into the stack.

The textural experience as one bites down through beet, burger, and egg is astonishing.
The flavor combinations are riotous yet composed. The beet makes such perfect
sense that we were left wondering why we hadn't thought of this first. There
certainly is no more colorful burger. And we're sure
that this is the most nutritious meal one can find between two buns - protein,
vitamins, iron from the beet - how could this be topped?

A note on the packaging: McDonalds
apparently believes it can wind its way into the hearts
of Kiwis (that's the word NZers use to describe themselves)
by composing a nonsensical song, written on the box,
which places the Kiwiburger in a laundry list of unique
NZ cultural icons. We're sure that the Kiwiburger is
just as important to Kiwis as Mount Cook and the All
Blacks
rugby team. Ah, McDonalds, ever the cultural ambassador.

We suspect that FFFers everywhere will be sneaking cooked beets into their local
Maccy Ds (as they call it down under) everywhere to give this treat a try.